Zap!

Many of you lovely readers are the same folks who come to visit our house on occasion… and if you’re visiting our house, you may well find yourself out back with the chickens, for a visit of course.

Well, if you go back there, you may see this new contraption attached to their coop. Big, white, and much like a spider web, our new fence keeps the chickens in and everything else out. And do you know how it does this my friends? Electricity. That’s right, our fence goes, “Zap!”

A fence such as this one deserves respect, but not fear. If you’re wearing shoes (which I recommend… or even boots… which you can find in the greenhouse), it’s not possible for enough electricity to pass through you to really hurt. Mind you, you still get a shock, like a big one from static electricity, so it isn’t fun, but it’s OK.

Note: If you allow all of the current to pass through you, you can hurt yourself. Not that I’ve done this before (ahem, uh, well, maybe, twice), but if you hold the fence in one hand and the alligator clip in another, all of the current passes through you and you are prone to make involuntary noises of pain. I do not recommend this.

So, if you would like to enter the fenced area, I recommend that you disable the fence first. Do you see the black box in this picture? It’s on the west side of the coop (the right side from the front). If you see a little red light flashing on the black box, the fence is on. Typically, you can actually hear the fence clicking, too, if you listen for it.

To disable the fence, simply unplug the black power box from the orange extension tail. It’s just like unplugging your toaster. Then, confirm that the light isn’t flashing, and you can feel comfortable about going into the chickens’ run. We do this by moving the white post away from the coop and stepping through. Be sure to put the post back while you’re in the run, because there are a few adventurous chickens out there.

And when you leave the run, be sure to plug everything back in and go back to listen to the fence and make sure it’s clicking. (Also, be sure that the fence isn’t touching the metal of the coop and sending all of its power that way. If it is, you’ll hear the clicking right by your feet instead off down the fence somewhere.)